The little Redhead from Indiana

So now that I shared who Met was- where he came from- what he became to me, its time to share about Thane. After all this blog really is his. smile

Thane is one of four puppies born to Scarlet and Finn, both red and white Border Collies out of Indiana. He spent the first nine months of his life as Shane; living with his mom and co-breeder amidst their varied pack of dogs- from toy to giant breed.

Following the passing of Met, he came to live with me in the hopes of becoming my future service dog. The trip from Indiana to Oregon, was tumultuous at best for this Indiana country boy. He had so many changes to adjust to- no longer part of a pack as the low man in it, he became the solitary dog in his new home life. From country to town where just the presence of regular traffic flow was something to be in awe of- he had a lot of adjusting to go through.

Re-named Thane- a type of noble man in the Shakespearean era, this little red and white smooth coat boy, had a long way to go before fulfilling his name.

For me, it was a huge eye opening experience to witness just how much I had at one time taught his predecessor- Thane was close to that of a blank slate. He had, for the most part, pretty awesome household manners and behavior for such a young Border Collie. What he had in manners however, he lacked in training. It was going to be up to me to either make or break him as a potential guide and service dog. Only time would tell though which way this was going to go.

At first, the most we really accomplished were the very basics of obedience training amidst the constant reminders that this little redhead was anything but my Met. He had different mannerisms, different likes and dislikes, different pluses and minuses. He was definitely NOT my dog that I so desperately missed and wanted the void of to be filled in the snap of my fingers.

At first, Thane's real role was that of keeping me busy and giving me someone- something that needed me and my care. I will admit, his early life here was anything but stress free as I wrestled with what I sorta coin *my demons* in the journey of letting go of Met and accepting him for who he was and could become to me. This was anything but an easy process.

I suffered from what is often known as *second dog syndrome*. It is that difficult condition, if you will, of relinquishing your first dog and journey with it- allowing oneself to accept, bond with, and work with the new and often times very different successor candidate. It was the letting go of the innocence one had as they trained, bonded, worked, and lost their first service dog and allowed that self to move on with the lessons of yesterday without allowing them to overshadow the joy and good in what lay ahead.

When one can come to such a *letting go* and *moving forward* in the journey of the bonding process- allowing themselves growth as a trainer and handler in the process towards a successor partnership, amazing things can and often do flourish.

I will be the first to admit that Thane is no Chimette. There may never be again in my life, that magical kind of partnership, bond and love that I had with my first special man. Thane though is very special in his own ways. He is an awesome guide dog when his energy is not busting out his seams. Living in an apartment in rain central USA does not do much for energy expenditure. I've learned to give him the long walks to stores in town or to the bus so that he can expend that energy and thus be more effective in that crucial *crowd* work we often encounter.

Most people recognize Border Collies as awesome hearing dogs, but are quite surprised by a guide dog of the same breed. Thane is an interesting specimen for sure. To date, he has turned out to be a much more responsive guide dog than he may ever be as a hearing dog for me. All of this of course came as quite a surprise to me after my previous dog was just so good at everything along the progressive path of my disabilities over our years together.

Met was very much in the game for what he could do for me. He loved his job- sometimes too much. Thane on the other hand, is very much a guide dog in that same light but when it comes to indoor tasks in his obsessive toy environment of our home life, it becomes very much one of *what can I get out of doing this task for her*. I will admit, its not necessarily the kind of work ethic one wants for a multi-disability, multi-environment needed service dog, but at this stage of the game- it works for us because of just how toy obsessed Thane happens to be. I guess in some ways that little obsession of his, is a good thing. LOL Do I wish he had a little more the ethic of his predecessor- sure, but then there is probably a lot of things that he is for me, that he just might not be.

I had said at one point following Met's passing that I never wanted to depend on a dog so much again that in their absence I could not function. Perhaps Thane's gift to me is just that- making me keep my promise to myself that he would never become the *only* functional tool I could live my life by.

For now, I am just grateful for those wonderful people in Indiana who had the ability in their hearts to let go of the little redhead they had raised for the first nine months of his life. For without them and their generosity, my life today would be a very different one. Thane truly was and is a gift- one I hope I never become so accustomed to that I take advantage of what he does for me.

Chimette's Story: When Vaccines Go Haywire

Life could not have been more perfect. It was the spring of 1998 and just as plants were blossoming with the new season so was my teamwork with my first service dog, Chimette. Our partnership, further training, and work were all coming in sinc. The more exposure to the community, college life, shopping, time with friends that Met experienced, the better he was able to make quick decisions that made my life safer as I traveled independently in my community. I was coming alive; feeling that I could do anything I set my mind to all thanks to the love, skill, and devotion of my gentle boy.

After a veterinary checkup filled with more vaccinations than I was comfortable with having administered all at once, I was left watching my service dog slip away from me. He became afraid of everything- any sudden movement, anything that loomed over his height, he withdrew from touch, he no longer could handle all the unpredictability of service dog life. I imagine now the experience was not so different from what a parent sees as their child slips into autism. One difference being that I had come to rely upon Met for so much.

Though, I came to realize that Mets falling apart before my eyes seemed so much like the young dog he was after I adopted him, at this point I did not make the connection yet to the fact that the very vaccines I wanted to wait on were responsible for Met's collapse and our lost partnership, temporary as it was. Of course while presented with it, I had no idea whether or not the problems we were encountering would be temporary or permanent. The vets were no help in any of the process- not with a cause, and certainly not with elimination of the problem or rehabilitative techniques to work with. It was up to me to help Met if I could.

I took an incomplete in my coursework and began the long arduous process of working through the myriad of symptoms and difficulties that presented themselves for us. From shadows, to statues, to trees, to kids on bicycles, skates, and skateboards. At times he literally crab walked if he had to go near statues or trees. It was quite sad to see a dog who loved to raise his leg to a big tree, literally crumble at their presence. I knew I probably had seen the end of our partnership at least where public access was concerned. All that remained was seeing just how much I could rehabilitate him. I never considered, however, the possibility that this could just be the way he was going to be. He had some of these problems to a lesser degree when I adopted him (thought to be from lack of socialization), so I believed that we could conquer whatever *this* was. If he came out of it once, then just maybe twice could happen as well.

Over the next few months, life slowly returned to normal. With the help of a clicker (before I even was aware of clicker training), I re-conditioned Met to the various obstacles in our life- things that exposure could not be prevented unless he stayed in seclusion within our apartment  for the rest of his life. I gave him consistency and built his exposures to the intolerables- changing them into normal common occurrences he accepted once more. I will admit that there were times that I got exasperated, pushed too much too fast, and probably as a result slowed the rehabilitative path. No one would have known that we had encountered such a devastating blow to our partnership after these few months were behind us. Met was not only working much more effectively in our home environment, but his skill level in the community, shopping and walks on the college campus, had become more on target and focused.

After this experience, I opted to work with another veterinarian in the practice. He was more down to earth and listened to his clients. We had seen him enough to know that he was caring not just for the animals but that in our situation as a service dog team, he would understand about how changes in Met could very well have an impact on my functionality as well. Its just too bad that he was not the vet we saw that spring day when Met had his annual exam. Five months after Mets *meltdown* though having him in our corner was one of the best things going for us when the seizures began.

It happened out of the blue- there was no noticeable pre-ictal phase. One moment Met and I were sitting in our bedroom and the next moment he had been catapulted skyward, his body thrust up and down like a kangaroo- muscles so rigid and limbs contorted. It felt like I was in the midst of a nightmare. Nothing this horrible could really be taking place- and yet it was. The first time it happened I was quite literally in denial. I gathered him up on my lap nonetheless and had a good cry. This was the worst possible thing I could have done for him though. As I'd learn later, acting as normal as possible once the seizure passes is as important (if not more so) with canine seizures as it is with people. I was scared though. I was scared of what would become of Met. I was scared of dealing with my disabilities without his assistance as I lived my life in the community.

Many dogs have very mild problems once all the tests are in and meds and triggers handled properly. For a service dog though, this usually spells out retirement. A retirement neither I nor Met was ready for. But I had that great vet in my corner- a vet who believed in both of us and our partnership. Now it was just a matter of determining if we could be one of those teams that made it. Could we gain the control of Mets seizures that would be necessary for him to safely carry out his job? or would he be one of many service dogs whose job ends as a result of a myriad of diseases, including seizure disorders?

To most in the service dog community, the answer would be clear- the mere thought of working with a dog that had even the slightest thing out of balance would be unconceivable. This is far from a little thing if control is not easily achieved though. I could go through the entire process here of how we found a proper diagnosis for Met, but that is something best left for a book. Through his history, his triggers, even his issues with various fillers and drugs it became all to clear that Met had vaccinosis a topic covered with wonderful skill, personal experience, and support in the books What Vets Don't Tell you About Vaccines and Shock to the System. Vaccinosis is more understood and accepted today in 2011, but in 1998 the only hope for those afflicted was avoidance of triggers and homeopathy. Its sad to me that what was misconstrued at adoption to be a lack of socialization, the meltdown in the spring following his vaccinations, and now seizures- after months of virus replication in his system from the vaccines might all have been avoided had his system not been overloaded in the first place.

In hindsite the answer seems easy in regards to his service dog status- retirement. I did not have the luxury of looking at things from a hindsite perspective though. With a, then slower paced lifestyle, I chose to try and gain control not knowing at the time that the cause was vaccinosis. I worked closely with my vet during the early medication adjustment months. Though occasional break throughs happened, they tended to happen at home. Through the help of the K9epilepsy group and Beyond Vaccination on yahoogroups, as well as EPIL-K9 I was able to discover many helps, answers to my questions, and a release for the anxiety I had been keeping pent up inside of me. As a result of the control we were able to achieve, we continued our partnership. By then I had a sedentery lifestyle so retirement was not a necessity for us. Met and I worked together close to another 9 years after that. It wasn't always filled with perfect control, but it was a wonderful decade of love, lessons learned and taught, and eventually of letting go.

What I Feel, He Reveals

If there's anything I appreciate about my Border Collie boys, it is that they have made me a better trainer and handler because of who they are/ were by making me aware of my own state of mind, stress level, and tension.

Throughout the service dog community forums, one topic that comes up frequently is how our emotions travel down the leash to our dogs. In my opinion, this effect can't be seen better in any other breed than the Border Collie.

Many dogs let changes in their handlers dispositions or emotions just roll right off of them- be it tension, illness, emotional variations from sad to angry; elated to calm. This however isn't the case of every dog partnered with a disabled handler. Our service dogs vary from soft to hard in both methods of training and how they handle the events of life. These events include the emotions, we as trainers and handlers, send down the lead- often times things we are totally unaware of unless our dogs tension and relaxation status in harness fluctuates from one day to the next- or even from one moment to another in extreme situations.

Both of my boys have been soft dogs. Though in most situations I can without a doubt say that Met was the softer of the two, there are circumstances where this is so *not the case*. Those circumstances revolve around what I am sending down the lead to Thane.

In our first year together, life was anything but smooth or stress free. First, I was grieving the loss of a decade long partnership with the most awesome service dog. Second, I was learning to adapt to my progressive disabilities without Met's assistance. Finally, I was trying to get to know this new kid on the block who was definitely *NOT* Met. One can only imagine the emotions that I was giving off as I tried to figuratively put one foot in front of the other while trying to teach this bouncy, energetic, nine month old country transplant that a leash and walking on it loosely was a concept he *MUST* get *YESTERDAY*. I was anything but calm and collected and it showed in him.

Those early months are a blurr quite honestly. We somehow got through those nightmarish times of training Thane to go busy on lead, LLW, direction training for guide work, and were able to move onto harness work. I continued to set our partnership back, however, through my roller coaster grief, expectations, and tensed up leash communications at best. Though I would not have wanted to be going it alone dogless, I know (thanks to hindsite) that I shared way too much negative energy down the lead in our process to become a team.

I would work with Thane one day and have a positively awesome experience. He would be pulling into harness at a perfect tension for my needs; walking and guiding smoothly as we went along. It would seem we had finally arrived. We might have this kind of experience for a day or two or if we were really lucky, a week. Then with no reason at all, or so it seemed, we would be ten paces back. It would be a struggle to walk one block at a comfortable harness tension. I was quite honestly baffled at the changes in Thane. I just could not get my head around these bizarre differences. It was like there were two versions of him and I never knew each day as we rolled out the front door which version of him I would be working with.

I was scanning two books for Bookshare at the time. Canine Adventures, Fun Things to Do with Your Dog, and Shock to the System. Both of these books had areas devoted to stress. Shock to the System especially had me questioning my own status, not just Thanes. When we would have a rough patch of training or work, I began to check in with myself. What I mean by this is that I would do a check on just how I was feeling and especially reacting- physically, emotionally, stress-wise. What I discovered more times than not, when Thane was *off-kilter* as I began calling these high strung times, it was directly linked to some aspect of my own being.

Though it has not always been easy for me to let things roll off my back, for our partnership, I strove to learn how to do just that. In this process, I have become a better trainer and handler by quite literally seeing what I was feeling. Thane has essentually been a guide through more than just my blindness. He has taught me how to be healthier by letting the things go that just are not important enough to hold onto. He has, in his simple Border Collie way, set me free from myself, allowing us to have a partnership where I see a reflection of myself revealed in red and white.

Going Against the Grain

I work with and love the Border Collie breed. When I trained my first service dog Chimette, a Border Collie Shepherd cross who looked and acted very much Border Collie, I focused initially on training him to be my ears in the world. As a result, no one thought twice or made any comment whatsoever along the lines of whether or not he was the right breed for the job. As my disabilities progressed, Chimette was trained as a guide dog, hearing dog, medical alert dog, and mobility service dog. No one over all the years we were training or partnered together made so much as a comment about his fitness for the job at hand based upon his breed- perhaps because he was first a hearing dog.

When Chimette passed away though, things were very different for me. I had a host of disabilities to adapt to and the need to prioritize where to focus my training first when Thane came into my life. Though we dabbled in hearing dog training during those first winter months together that kept us from doing a lot of training in the community, the first focus of training was to mold Thane into my guide dog.  Thane is a purebred Border Collie from strong herding lineage. In my pursuit of guide dog training and the partnership that has followed, I encountered so many mystified people. People were often surprised that I was going against his natural instincts to mold him into my future guide. It was more rare to encounter people who were not surprised by this decision of mine than to encounter those who were. Some of these folks, like his Ophthalmologist, were just downright curious while others just had to voice their opinions about how insensitive I was being to Thane by asking him to curtail his natural instincts. Not so fast! Thane's natural instincts are part of what makes him the perfect candidate for the job. 

As a deafblind individual my dogs training is dramatically different than that of a guide dog trained for a blind individual with normal hearing. I allow my guides a certain amount of leniency in focus. I do this by encouraging their awareness of important things with praise, while simply ignoring or using our leave it command for things that are unnecessary alerts. The crux is that they need to not only safely guide me around obstacles and through traffic, but they need to share with me the important things going on around us wherever we may be. I want to know, for instance, if someone is walking close behind us or if kids are playing on the sidewalk ahead so we can alter our pace, take another route, or change our direction entirely for safety reasons. I want to know when emergency vehicles are coming so that I don't get caught crossing a street when they are in route to an emergency. Though all of this training does not happen initially, praising for his alertness to important cues can be the difference between safe travels as a team and injury or  becoming the victim of a predator. Chimette saved me from a stalker who actually turned around and raped another person. Where would I have been then if all I had asked of my dog was to guide me around obstacles, but ignored my deafness in his training? I positively love my dogs alertness to his environment. Breed appropriateness for the task at hand is all in ones perspective.

Real-Life Emergencies

A week ago, Thane and I went through a harrowing experience. I nearly lost my life choking on some roast. One thing I recall thinking once I was out of danger was, what an inefficient design that is to the body where when something is stuck, your life hangs in the balance! This is even more the case in individuals with quadriplegia and some high level paras because we don't have the strength of cough necessary in such circumstances. Choking can literally be a life threatening scenario. This is not the first such occurence and probably won't be my last. This posting however isn't so much about the *me* side of this, but about the horrifying ordeal my guide and service dog went through.

Over this past week, I've tried to come to terms with the experience from the perspective of Thane- of what he went through, what could have become of him had things not turned around. It was horrifying to be in my shoes, but for him- it was an ordeal I hope he never has to experience again.

Initially, Thane came to my side as any service dog would who had been raised and trained as a partner to their disabled handler. My gasping, beating on my chest, and all the other *fight for life* that was taking place however instilled a *flight* response in Thane. The ordeal seemed to go on for a very long time. As anyone who has experienced something as traumatic as this knows- the feeling of time passing and the actuality of how much time really did pass; they rarely concur with each other. There are some aspects I don't remember about it such as getting the first breaths but the part I do remember is how frightened my little redhead was.

I never want him to experience fear like this again- the hiding in the other room under my desk as if that could help him escape what was taking place, trembling, heavy panting, and the obsessive licking and chewing that followed as he tried in his own way to vent the stress from such an unspeakable situation.

What I clearly remember are the soft sniffs and kisses I felt just prior to Thane curling up beside my tortured body. I wanted to somehow assure him that I would never put him or me through such an event again, but yet I knew all I could do was *hope* I could keep such a promise for both our sakes.Though in many ways I have recovered, in others, symptoms of this event remain with me. I can tell you though, regardless of how Thane reacted in this emergency situation, when all was said and done, curling up with my sidekick placing his chin upon my side that night was the best medicine anyone could have prescribed as I dealt with *reality* of my life nearly being cut short.